Why is installing gettext so bad on a uclibc build?

I am trying to get glib-dbus built and it appears to need at least a basic gettext to be available. Some mailing list posts warn about dire consequences of installing gettext and the "nls" flag is profile masked.

However, I see patches and builds for gettext and glib-dbus in many embedded distros including openwrt, and references to installing gettext in the linux-from-scratch and debian uclibc handbooks

So can someone please give me the real lowdown on the issues here?

(Note exact compile errors given in a previous email in case they are nothing to do with gettext at all...)